Remarks by
Ong Keng Yong
Secretary-General of ASEAN
at the
CAPAM 2006 Biennial Conference
Sydney, 23 October 2006
1. A little over a month from today, a group of ten wise men will present the Leaders of ASEAN with a set of recommendations on what form of a charter ASEAN should have. This ASEAN Charter, with its promise to transform ASEAN, has created a buzz in our part of the world.
2. But first, let me give a little background. Not all here would be familiar with how ASEAN currently works and the significance of this development.
3. Since its beginnings in 1967, ASEAN has operated in a fairly loose arrangement, without a formal legal framework or strong institutional mechanisms. The ten Member Countries of this regional organisation have worked with what has been termed the “ASEAN Way”. To put it simply, the “ASEAN Way” is an informal decision-making process based on consultation and consensus. Some of the decisions result in regional agreements. Others result into something closer to an understanding. In ASEAN, there is a general reticence to push Member Countries to comply with agreed actions. There are also no formal mechanisms to ensure compliance. In all, implementation tends to depend on the interest and political commitment of individual Member Countries in following through.
4. The “ASEAN Way” has been viewed as idiosyncratic but for historical reasons and the prevailing political environment of the time, it has been what we found “workable”.
5. Thirty-nine years later, ASEAN is now moving towards deeper economic integration. Our target is to have an ASEAN Community by 2020. Community building is a serious endeavour and we needed to look into strengthening ASEAN’s institutional framework to support this. The ASEAN Leaders recognised that the existing loose arrangement that governs ASEAN today is increasingly anomalous with our integration goals and can hinder ASEAN’s ability to tackle transboundary issues in the region. They have pushed for establishing an effective and efficient framework that would be responsive to the challenges and needs of community building. In 2005, they agreed to start the groundwork for establishing an ASEAN Charter.
6. Although it is anyone’s guess as to what the ASEAN Charter would look like when it is completed at the end of 2007, two things are clear.
7. First, the spirit of the Charter is about making the ASEAN Community work, and work well. While the Charter is not about an ASEAN concept of governance per se, it will set the tone for effective governance in the Community.
8. Second, whatever the form the Charter takes, it will not be a panacea. Each individual member government must be capable of fulfilling its responsibilities and obligations to ASEAN. There is thus in the collective interest of ASEAN Member Countries to better equip the national agencies to achieve expected standards of good governance.
9. Let me elaborate.
The ASEAN Charter and Governance in the ASEAN Community
10. The ASEAN Leaders, in agreeing to establish the ASEAN Charter, have identified the key functions of the Charter.
11. Foremost, the Charter will codify all ASEAN norms, rules and values that will guide the actions of Member Countries. This will provide a degree of clarity as to-date, there is no document in ASEAN that spells this out. As a start, the Leaders have listed eighteen principles, drawn from existing ASEAN agreements, which they feel the Charter should enshrine. This list is not exhaustive.
12. Next, the Charter, serving as the legal and institutional framework of ASEAN, will steer ASEAN towards a more rules-based organisation. The need for this has already become more apparent with the increase in economic agreements, both intra-ASEAN as well as between ASEAN and external parties. Economic integration needs to move beyond being paper agreements. However, in the absence of rules, enforcement and compliance becomes a challenge. Neither the Member Countries nor the Secretary-General has the authority or capacity to ensure compliance for any of the existing ASEAN agreements. There is also little recourse in the event of a dispute between Member Countries. In the economic arena, steps have been taken with the establishment of the 2004 Enhanced Dispute Settlement Mechanism, or DSM. But even so, there is still a reluctance to activate this DSM. Provisions in the Charter to establish robust mechanisms for monitoring implementation and ensuring compliance would contribute greatly to ASEAN’s effectiveness.
13. Finally, the Charter will likely lead to a reformed structure of ASEAN to make it work more efficiently and effectively. Over the years, the ASEAN family has grown to include twenty-eight ministerial bodies. By and large, these ministerial bodies take decisions independent of one another. However, the transnational and inter-sectoral nature of challenges facing ASEAN today, for instance avian flu, requires tighter coordination. ASEAN’s current structure has not been conducive to this. In this context, the Charter will determine the functions and develop areas of competencies of key ASEAN bodies and their relationships with one another. Non-ministerial bodies in the ASEAN structure could also be looked at. Furthermore, the Charter may re-examine the decision-making process in ASEAN. Currently, ASEAN operates on consensus but there may be room to explore a system of decision-making based on the majority position on specified areas and issues.
Governance Across the Member Countries
14. But as we move towards more effective governance in the ASEAN Community guided by the ASEAN Charter, we realise that the challenges of governance have first to be addressed at the national level in the ASEAN Member Countries.
15. Contributing to an environment that fosters good governance in its Member Countries is perhaps an even more complex undertaking for ASEAN than establishing a Charter. There are varying levels of economic and political development among the ASEAN Member Countries, as well as different socio-cultural reference points.
16. To illustrate the challenges ASEAN faces, we can take a look at our cooperation in customs administration as one example. The member governments have agreed to establish what we call the ASEAN Single Window by 2012 to embed the principles of consistency, simplicity, transparency and efficiency in administering customs procedures for the import and export of goods. In a nutshell, the ASEAN Single Window will speed up the clearance of imports, through the electronic processing of trade documents at both the national and regional levels. The use of info-comm technology, or ICT, in streamlining customs procedures is expected to significantly facilitate cross-border trade and investment in the region.
17. While this is a regional initiative, it is at the national level where implementation is crucial. Public servants in the relevant national agencies have to be prepared for this change. In part, this is about ensuring that across the board, they have the ICT skill requirements and can absorb the new procedures. But it is also about changing mindsets. Customs officials need to cultivate a mindset that welcomes innovation and have an outlook that sees the benefit of working regionally. They also need to understand that cutting red tape and increasing the transparency and predictability of the customs process is good for business, and in the national interest.
18. The changing of mindsets is important in the ASEAN Single Window initiative but is even more crucial in the overall interaction between governments and the public in ASEAN. This brings me to my second example illustrating the sort of challenges ASEAN faces in enabling good goverance.
19. The ASEAN Leaders have made it clear that they want ASEAN to be more people-centred and integral to the lives of all Southeast Asians. They want to dispel the notion that ASEAN is only for the government elite and only the officials can understand the ASEAN activities and jargon. So in the recent years, the Leaders and Ministers have increased their engagement with the business community, the youth and other segments of civil society.
20. A people-centred ASEAN and engagement is not about ensuring every bit of public input is reflected in policy. This could lead to impractical policies, or watered-down regulations. Having a people-centred approach in ASEAN is about being sensitised to the needs of the citizenry such that a regard for their well-being is combined with practical experience in public administration. This will result in policies and programmes that are both action-oriented and beneficial to the people. A people-centred ASEAN requires national agencies that are open to discourse – not only receiving feedback from the public but also in making information available in the interest of transparency. Equally important are officials who can manage expectations and harmonise multi-faceted views without misleading the public opinion.
21. However, within ASEAN, there is a general reticence on the part of the civil servants to engage the public, sometimes, even at the level of basic information exchange. While there are some member governments that have experience engaging with civil society, this has not been the culture for most of the region’s public sector. So while the political leaders call for more engagement, the bureaucrats are sometimes at a loss on what to do next.
22. These two examples illustrate the need for the public service in ASEAN Member Countries to build capacity in some key areas of governance in order for each country to fulfil its obligations to the ASEAN Community. A commitment to innovation, learning, service, professionalism and openness needs to be fostered in the public service.
23. The Heads of ASEAN Civil Service have recognised that the implementation of programmes for ASEAN community building and regional integration depends largely on efficient, competent and professional civil service agencies in the region. Some ASEAN Member Countries have already set good governance as a priority in the government policy.
24. At the regional level, steps have been made towards public sector capacity building in ASEAN with the ASEAN Resource Centres in each of the ten Member Countries serving as the platform for collaboration, training and information exchange. Each resource centre has a particular area of expertise, for instance, on managing new technologies, developing case studies, management innovation, civil service testing, and leadership development, among others. Of late, activities have been developed to enhance ICT and ICT management skills; assist in the drafting of civil service rules and regulations or codes of conduct; introduce change management; improve document management; and budgetary reforms. This cooperation is a good start towards instilling good governance across the region.
Conclusion
25. In conclusion, perhaps I need to highlight that governance as understood in the developed nations is a fairly new concept in ASEAN. However, the good principles and practices therein are already in ASEAN’s culture and traditions. We have to modernise our approach to governance to raise the level of good public administration. An ASEAN Community must be based on rules and the centrality of public responsibility. In our new community-building effort, we cannot rely on the “ASEAN Way” as we know it. The “ASEAN Way” has served us well in the past but it now has to evolve and embrace other good practices to keep up with times.
26. We are not aiming for an EU-style integration as yet. We do not wish to have all the institutions that the EU has and we are not sure that the EU road is what we want for our future.
27. As Southeast Asians, we are determined to develop an innovative ASEAN Community where governments and people work closely for the common good. In this ASEAN Community, we need to enable good governance, at both the regional and national levels. With an ASEAN Charter in place, we would have made a good start.
